Living to make much of Jesus

Constantly Feeling the Need to Prove Yourself to Others is Exhausting

the very works that I am doing—testify that the Father has sent me….(John 5:36).

Have you ever felt like you needed to prove yourself to other people? Yep, me too. Jesus dealt with this tension often. Not because He felt like it was something He needed to do, but because people kept impressing their unbelief upon Him. Thereby expecting Him to prove Himself to them in a way that made sense only to them.

I’ve been there too. In a place where people didn’t believe me, so you know what I did? I ran frantically trying to gather up enough information to prove to others that I wasn’t lying. Do you know where this got me? Nowhere, and exhausted. Exhausted because I spent all of my mental energies trying to prove to someone else what I already knew to be true.

The funny thing was, lots of trusted people in my life confirmed it to be true as well. The problem was that I kept focusing on not having the approval and belief of certain people, so I ran in circles trying to convince them that this was indeed my plight.

Let’s just put it in layman’s terms; haters gonna hate. For those of you that don’t know what that means, some people just aren’t going to open their minds to what you’re saying, because either they don’t care or they don’t want to believe you, because if they do that means they have to let go of some wrong belief they’ve held onto. It may also mean they have to start supporting you or change their behavior, but because not believing you allows them to sit on the sidelines and continue on in a way that feels comfortable, they’ll shut you out and might even attempt to convince others that your story isn’t true.

So what do we do when haters start hating? Get mad, bitter, resentful, possibly seek revenge? Maybe try to make them look really bad? Motivations and actions like this only cause destruction in our lives. Jesus simply kept doing His Father’s work. He let His character and integrity speak for itself. He didn’t spend much daylight chasing after the haters. He simply let them say what they wanted, spoke some hard truths into their life and kept moving forward with His Father.

Friends, keep moving forward with your Father. Don’t get so distracted by the people who aren’t praising you like you want them to. I have expended and wasted so much mental energy trying to prove myself to others. Today, I’m choosing instead to chase after my Father and let His love dance over me. Today, I’m living to please a simple audience of one. Gosh, that’s hard for me to do, but I desperately want that for my life.

Lord, you never felt the need to prove yourself to other people. I want to be like you in that way. I want to keep my eyes fixed not on the approval of people, but on your love and grace that dances over me. Thank you for loving me, in Jesus name, Amen.

As always, super refreshing and blessed. Haters are going to hate lol. You’re a cool person. Monday i heard “move forward” always so interesting to me that i get so much confirmation of things that were recently said to me in my quiet time. I usually don’t read your blog tho until i work it out with Jesus cuz then it would be like SPOILER ALERT.